About Convict Records

Welcome aboard Convict Records!

Convict Records aims to be the most comprehensive reference of convicts transported to Australia, between 1787 to 1867.

A trip down (relatively recent) memory lane

Waaaaaaaaay back in 2011, the State Library of Queensland combined numerous State-based convict databases to produce the British Convict Transportation Registers.

Soon afterwards, software developer Steve Thomas worked the data into a web application, and built tools allowing for public contribution.

Later on, Convict Records moved under the stewardship of Steve's company; Coding Labs - a software development agency based on the Gold Coast, Queensland.

In the last 14 and a bit years, over 130,000 contributions have been made - annotating and tidying up existing records - and over 19,000 previously missing convicts have been added to the database. If you are reading this, and you contributed, thank you!

Our commitment

The best resource of its kind

Convict Records has been the resource of choice for family researchers and educational institutions since 2011 and we continue to build on this success with an ongoing roadmap of improvements for this one-of-a-kind service.

Open data

When it comes to the historical data powering Convict Records (convict data that is) we strongly believe that this data should be more easily available and remain in the public domain.

Protecting your private information

Your private data (such as your email address) is kept private, and we will never share your private details without your consent.

Get in touch

We'd love to hear from our members about the features they want to see in Convict Records, as well as pointing things you like or don't like.

Click on the feedback icon in the bottom right of the screen.